Their injuries did not bite to their spirits.
Lola saw everything from a clear vantage untainted by supernatural Rage: the boy with whom Hector patrolled that night broke through a window and was set upon by a pit bull that he bit at until it stopped moving. It did not die for Thomas's attacks did less damage than the Uktena's even in the body of a dire wolf. Hector tore off a warped lap dog's head with his first bite before he was eviscerated by gunfire. A tank of a man turned to a monster with a second mouth in his great gut.
This is the second story Hector will tell that ends like this: If Lola weren't there I might have died. She blew off the Fomor's head before it could bite the Galliard, his belly already trailing intestines. All it would have taken to end his life was one well-played clamp of an unholy set of jaws.
But he was a werewolf and not a boy and something happened in that church that's left his warm gaze not at all like soft earth anymore but like the ancient face of a mountain. His Rage isn't something he burns off so he can ignore it and be around humans easier. It isn't something banked inside of him. It is a part of him. Hector was prepared to tear into the thing before Lola put a bullet into its head.
Once the fight was done Hector and Thomas sniffed out the source of the quailed humans. If she would wait, the humans could stay in the room until the bodies were burned if not buried and the living room was cleansed, Hector performing the ritual to banish the spirits with his hair down and his body still bloody, speaking words that mean nothing to the others.
They are what they are. Lola is human. She speaks Spanish. She gets to talk to the frightened immigrants while Hector pushes Thomas out of the house and hides in the kitchen and washes the blood from his face and his torso. Someone might as well call the human law enforcement to tell them there's a human smuggler based out of the car wash. They cannot burn everything they find offensive to Gaia. Hector stays out of sight until what's done is done.
When what's done is done they have nothing left but to keep putting a foot before the other and the hour is late. By the time their paths reconvene in the driveway the Shadow Lord has gone and Hector has buttoned his shirt to conceal the last lingering proof of the shotgun's blast, the fact that his t-shirt did not survive his shifting. He has raked his hair back into its band.
Nights past he's seemed still-human after battles for his bumbling and his joking. This night he did not stray from his path to check and see if Lola was alright. He issued every order and decided every course and now they stand outside and his Rage still burns. He doesn't say anything funny to delude himself into thinking he's still normal despite everything. In the driveway he took one wrist and tilted it to read the damage done to her palm by the glass. A short sentence. He'd let go her wrist without a word about it.
He's not a different person and nothing has changed about him. But he and his wolf have lived separately so long as she's known him. His wolf and the things he'd lived through as a wolf. If Lola does not feel now that she stands beside a Garou now and not a boy, she may one of these nights.
"I'm gonna walk you to the truck," he says now.
Lola Hawkes
This wasn't one of those battles where everyone walked away unscathed. Thomas suffered minor injuries, and Lola the same, both self-inflicted from their efforts to burst into the home through closed windows. Lola had gone in with her arm covering her head and rolled on the floor, so there was a bit of shattered glass stuck into her upper back and shoulder, but that didn't bother her. The glass did a better number on her when it sliced her forearm. Not deep, not long, but enough for blood to trail off her elbow and dribble on the floor when she hurried to join the living room.
She was there in time to see Thomas, a massive wolf-beast, twisting and snapping at a dragon-like pit bull, and to see Hector (with a face full of gore from destroying that other small dog) turning about to tear into the lumbering man with the massive stomach. The man had twisted, wounded, and pulled his shotgun up to aim at Hector's big Hispo body. Lola spied the face in his belly, but barely paid it mind.There were two successive gunshots, different in tones. The first was the shotgun, tearing into Hector's side and belly. The second was the revolver in Lola's hand, aimed steady and stoic. Her bullet went through the upper half of the skull, and that was enough to fall the man.
The Wolves, panting and bloodied, sniffed about and found a basement door. Lola walked along with them, placed a hand along Hector's flank (the side that wasn't shot up, torn and bloodied), then worked to clear the humans from the basement. One had a lousy grasp of English at best, and the rest cried and gibbered in Spanish. Women wrang her hands, children looked at her with wide teary eyes like she was a hero, and one particularly stout man gave her a firm, squeezing hug when he passed. She reciprocated, but barely, all of the gestures of thanks and affection she received. She would insist that they needed to be quick, to not worry, to head straight out and be on their way. To get lost, to not come back, to avoid this place at all costs. They were more than happy to comply.
There wasn't enough time to burn the bodies before the captives escaped, so Lola had ripped a filthy bedsheet off a bed in the back and covered the bulky two-faced thing up before the people flooded through the blood-slick living room and out the door. They were too frightened to ask questions, they were just happy to be free at last.
--------------------
Hector Ghosh
This wasn't one of those battles where everyone walked away unscathed. Thomas suffered minor injuries, and Lola the same, both self-inflicted from their efforts to burst into the home through closed windows. Lola had gone in with her arm covering her head and rolled on the floor, so there was a bit of shattered glass stuck into her upper back and shoulder, but that didn't bother her. The glass did a better number on her when it sliced her forearm. Not deep, not long, but enough for blood to trail off her elbow and dribble on the floor when she hurried to join the living room.
There were two successive gunshots, different in tones. The first was the shotgun, tearing into Hector's side and belly. The second was the revolver in Lola's hand, aimed steady and stoic. Her bullet went through the upper half of the skull, and that was enough to fall the man.
The Wolves, panting and bloodied, sniffed about and found a basement door. Lola walked along with them, placed a hand along Hector's flank (the side that wasn't shot up, torn and bloodied), then worked to clear the humans from the basement. One had a lousy grasp of English at best, and the rest cried and gibbered in Spanish. Women wrang her hands, children looked at her with wide teary eyes like she was a hero, and one particularly stout man gave her a firm, squeezing hug when he passed. She reciprocated, but barely, all of the gestures of thanks and affection she received. She would insist that they needed to be quick, to not worry, to head straight out and be on their way. To get lost, to not come back, to avoid this place at all costs. They were more than happy to comply.
There wasn't enough time to burn the bodies before the captives escaped, so Lola had ripped a filthy bedsheet off a bed in the back and covered the bulky two-faced thing up before the people flooded through the blood-slick living room and out the door. They were too frightened to ask questions, they were just happy to be free at last.
--------------------
Hector Ghosh
The properties surrounding the car wash loom and most of the windows are dark this time of night but those that aren't shine with the lights of people who don't intend to sleep before dawn. When the two clatter through the gaping wound in the fence no shutters flicker and no eyes appear in the windows. Those who call this place home are used to youths skulking about in the shadows and even if someone called the police this neighborhood is not on their priority list.
Nor are dead bodies gone to flame. They found a way to cut the face and mouth from the fat man, the tail from the dog. No sign of trespass and now they're on their way away from this place.
Hector moves slower than does Lola to avoid catching his hair on the torn piece of fence and then they walk across dying grass and chucked-up concrete to cut through other people's yards and parking lots belonging to dead and dying businesses.
For the first time since he returned to the city without his pack Hector hears praise from Lola's lips. He does not look over at her snap-fast like a dog perking at the sound of a whistle but she can feel the weight of his gaze when he turns his head. A gaze gone to a glance for his awareness of their surroundings and the knowledge that he does not have the chronological distance necessary to look at her and not want her.
Even walking apart from each other as they are Hector burns as a wire strung tight and shot through with electricity. His emotions and motives are a transparent thing: Lola knows he lets himself burn down the Rage because he is afraid of frenzying in front of her. The times he has come to her at the Homestead or come into her motel room he has been so bereft of that which makes him Garou that she could have mistaken him for something else.
The Galliard was a Lost Cub and would not have felt assured of his tribal allegiance were not for the voices of his ancestors echoing down through the ages at him. All the times they have been together during the stage of their friendship that he referred to as courtship, they were together with him not trusting himself to be Garou around her.
"Yeah, well," he says. "I had to protect White Boy. He's an idiot."
Lola Hawkes
He stared at her heavily when she praised him, and she raised her eyebrows at him in question. He cut his gaze short, closer to the length of time that an extended glance would be, so that he wasn't just outright staring her down. His Rage was a taut thing, even if it wasn't as bolstering as it had been while they stalked the sidewalks earlier in the night. It felt like walking in a cramped space alongside an electric fence-- one wrong move, one thoughtless step and she'd zap the hell out of herself.
But here, things were a bit different. Oh sure, there were still plenty of Garou who didn't hold Kin opinions in high regard. Apparently that has already done poor Hector in once before-- his tales of Lola at the Moot had negative whispers and churls circulating. Why waste time on the minor glory of a Kinfolk, when you should instead be singing tales for those who are actually impacted?
However, for the most part, Lola's word had enough weight here. Between he and her, it meant something. He trusted her opinion, because despite Lola's birthright, and despite her youth, she still had the heart and mind of a seasoned Ahroun. She had an eye for battle, a lust for it even. Her face would turn to slate, severe and focused, when she was behind her shotgun and pistols, lining up her aim for a skull or a hand or an eyeball. Her eyes would gleam, though, bright and alive. That was where she belonged. She felt the truth of that fact in her very soul. So she could sense when battle tactics meshed and when they would fail. She also knew a good display of leadership when she saw it. Hector trusted her opinion on this matter, and so he thanked her genuinely.
This opened a door for the conversation to go elsewhere-- for Hector to speak on a topic that was still so raw for him.
He doesn't believe Corey is coming back.
Lola glanced over at him, but her expression didn't change to reflect much surprise or concern. She raised her eyebrows, and asked evenly: "Did you think he would?"
Not quite enough time had passed for Hector to force Lola from his mind in that way. It was an established fact that feelings weren't quite mutual here, and they were both mature enough to let that be that, but it was one thing to agree to be friends logically, and another to force the gut and heart to agree. He'd get there, just not right now. Lola figured this would be the case, to some extent or another at least, so she tried to be mindful. Tried not to show quite so much physical affection, or to tease as much as she used to.
He dismissed his work that night on protecting 'White Boy', and Lola shook her head with a small grin on her face. The fence snapped back into place, and together they walked across a vacant lot of scorched grass and hunks of cement and pavement torn up and strewn about. Lola jammed her hands into the pockets of her shorts as they went.
"Yeah, a bit, I'll give you that. Kid runs like he's got fifty pound weights tucked into his shoes. But that's not what I'm talking about. You took charge of the scene, y'know? Were assertive, made decisions, gave orders, and more than that? I was compelled to follow 'em. Thomas was good giving you the lead too. You're coming into that Alpha role nicely."
Hector Ghosh
His feelings are nothing they need to talk about because Hector had already told her what he thought before he went ahead and kissed her: he would not be angry or bitter if she felt nothing but friendship for him. If his options were Be Friends or Lose Her he would not press the issue. The fact that he could not sort out his own feelings before Lola told him No with no uncertainty was one of the many ironies in the young Galliard's life.
It hadn't occurred to anyone that he wished he had died instead of her sister or Glen until he blurted out a convoluted synonym for his own grief and no obvious explanation exists for the shift in his demeanor either. Lola compliments him and his joke is heavier and without the reflexive mindlessness that tend to mark his jokes.
Then she explains what she meant when she told him he did good. Hector's expression changes from one of watchfulness to naked surprise that gives way to a humble sort of pleasure almost as foreign as the notion of Hector conducting himself in a genuinely confident manner and not simply doing whatever he was doing loud and unrestrained for thinking if he acted like he didn't give a shit no one would think twice about it.
They hadn't.
"Thanks, man," he says. He could leave it at that but Lola is his friend. She's starting to know him better than that. Hector tongues an incisor like to test the sharpness of what he's about to say before he lets it go: "Corey isn't coming back."
Lola Hawkes
Hector was surprised, and humbled by the high praised he received from Lola.
Praise from a Kinfolk might not seem much in more traditional circles. If this were the Black Forest Sept, for instance, Garou would scoff. Who cares if a Kinfolk thinks you're capable as an Alpha? What do they know? They've never been in a pack, they don't understand the dynamics of battlefield leadership and how that translates when you cross realities and dimensions and deal with spirits and armies and hoards and and and...But here, things were a bit different. Oh sure, there were still plenty of Garou who didn't hold Kin opinions in high regard. Apparently that has already done poor Hector in once before-- his tales of Lola at the Moot had negative whispers and churls circulating. Why waste time on the minor glory of a Kinfolk, when you should instead be singing tales for those who are actually impacted?
He doesn't believe Corey is coming back.
Lola glanced over at him, but her expression didn't change to reflect much surprise or concern. She raised her eyebrows, and asked evenly: "Did you think he would?"
Hector Ghosh
jamie @ 1:31PM
[lol frenzy check]
Roll: 5 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 4, 4, 5) ( fail ) VALID
[lol frenzy check]
Roll: 5 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 4, 4, 5) ( fail ) VALID
Hector Ghosh
This is why he doesn't talk about Corey: it pisses him off.
To state that Corey isn't coming back would imply that he's behaving in the manner in which he has been behaving because he has accepted this. And maybe he has. But to accept something means one has to feel peace about it. Otherwise one simply tolerates it. Hector has not been tolerating it because he has not even been acknowledging it.
He hasn't even been able to bring himself to say Corey's name in the last three months. It's been He Who Shall Not Be Named or You Know or Cockhead. If he says Corey's name he feels inside the way he felt physically when Corey had sufficiently beaten the shit out of him and torn away from Fog and left Winnipeg without either of the surviving Galliards.
Were not for the dark of the moon he would have frenzied. If it were his moon Hector would have completely lost his shit. He has the strength of will to stop it but his Rage already burns hotter than a younger Galliard's would. They are both of them safe from an unchecked frenzy tonight but he still feels as if Lola manages to reach in and pluck a suture inside of him.
He grits his teeth and says nothing.
Lola Hawkes
The surge of Rage beside her doesn't go unnoticed, not by a long shot. She's felt a similar burn from Wolves a few times before, and she knew what it usually indicated. Hector would be pleased to know that she did not react by reaching for the gun secured away in the waistband of her pants, tucked close against her back and hidden away under her loose-fitted tank top. She watched him carefully-- waited to see if he would begin to tremble and quake, to watch if fur sprouted along his hands and arms and if his face would push out.
If it had, she would have been forced to run. She wouldn't shoot Hector (not unless she absolutely had no other option whatsoever), so instead she would try and find a space to hide in, where he could not reach or fit and where she could ride out the storm. She couldn't immediately pinpoint any such place around her, but that was fine. Hector was in control.
Even though his Rage lashed and burned white hot, he stayed steady and 'human' and silent.
Lola was quiet as well while this storm rattled their windows then decided that it would not blow the house off the foundation. After walking another quarter of a lot with him in shared silence (or more, silence he inflicted upon her while trying not to succumb to the Beast), she spoke up in a quieter tone.
"I didn't. Think he was, that is. And I'm sorry for that. I liked him, y'know? But from what you told me about how things went down, well..." She looked over at him, caught his eyes with hers for at least a moment because she persisted. "Did you want him back? Would you take him, if he came?"
Hector Ghosh
After the urge to lash out at a world that has done nothing to him Hector curls his hands and puts them into the pockets of his jeans. It keeps them holstered same as her waistband keeps her gun holstered and he keeps walking beside Lola with only a slight falter in his pace.
For the first time in their lives Lola watches that Rage of his flare up inside of him and she watches him keep moving forward despite of it. This is why he's always burned it off before spending any significant amount of time with her. He's always let himself stay spent after battles. If he frenzied in front of her she would have to run and hide and if he does not keep it in check or if he survives another tragedy then he runs the risk of falling thrall to the Wyrm and she may have to put him down one day.
She is Kinfolk. Just as she does what she does to ensure the survival of their Caern and their people she has to do what is going to ensure her own survival. Capable in combat as she is her worth still lies in the fact that she will one day bring new life into the world. She is the last of her line in service to the Bawn. They will go on without her but it would not be easy. She has to do what she has to do in order to keep on living.
She has to be able to withstand the Rage of Garou like Echoes of the Lost.
When she looks over at him again Lola sees his eyes shine with saltwater he refuses to shed. He cannot frenzy and he cannot destroy everything around them and he cannot scream. Might go off and find strong drink and a woman strong enough to tolerate his presence later but right now he's with her and she's his friend and he lets her see the hurt in his eyes before he blinks it away and swallows it down. Watching him as she is Lola can read a scant nod.
Yes, he wanted Corey back. Yes, he would have taken Corey if he did come back.
"Doesn't matter what I wanted," he says in a voice gone rough for all of these things he cannot do. "He left and I'm not waiting for him to come back."
They conquer a parking lot and come up on the sidewalk on the street where they left her truck. It sits beneath the anemic streetlamp where she left it. In the distance a siren wails but it is not for them.
Lola Hawkes
In the dark of the night, with only the occasional dingy yellow glow of a street lamp that would reach pathetically to the lot they cut across, Lola saw the glassy sheen of tears-not-yet-formed in Hector's eyes. She felt a twinge in her heart, a spasm of sympathy. She did not reach out to him, though some compulsion urged her to put an arm around his shoulders and pull him against her side, to pat and comfort. She didn't believe that he wanted that, not really. Although she was certain that a good, hard, bitter cry would do him good, she wouldn't try to encourage it from him by coddling him. He needed to get to that point himself, and when he was ready she would be willing to support. However, she couldn't take him by the ponytail and drag him to emotional catharsis.
Instead, he blinked so his eyes would clear and the moment passed, for the most part. Their feet hit sidewalk, and they turned left to approach the curb where she'd left her truck. A siren wailed in the distance, but Lola didn't fret. Even if they were responding to the scene they were walking away from, they had no reason to associate her and Hector with it.
His response to her question was mulled over for a second, and her thumbs hooked in the empty belt loops of her shorts. She looked down at the toes of her sneakers, still splashed with blood that she hasn't gotten around to properly wiping off yet.
"You shouldn't wait." At first, this seemed all that she would say on the matter. Lola was no great orator, after all. But then:
"You-- we can't afford to wait for for anyone to come back. Not in this day and age, and especially not with the shit happening at the Spire Sept. I hate it, a whole fuck-ton I hate it, but casualties are caused by more than death, and casualties are a terrible part of our culture.
"But you know that." She glanced up, over to him, and pulled the corners of her mouth into a grim semblance of a smile. "Sometimes it's just good to be reminded?"
Hector Ghosh
All moments end. This is the most important thing to know when beset by events beyond one's control. The moment when Hector was overcome by emotions he did not want or know what to do with would end whether he frenzied or whether he had a meltdown or whether he did as he does. He weathers it.
And Lola might wait for him to flare up with things he does not want to feel or acknowledge again or to push at her as she reaches out to him despite the bluntness of her speech and her lack of patience for it. They approach the truck and then stop when they have nowhere else to go. Her shoes are stained. He is still scratched up from buckshot beneath his shirt. Smells like metal-sharp sweat and stolen mouthwash.
He stands with his hands hidden and he listens to her though she says nothing new. That she says anything at all shows she's making an effort. She owes him no such effort but his eyes do not well up again and he does not clamp down on his Rage for it does not roil in him now.
"I just--"
For telling tales of others as true and fierce as he does when it comes time to talk of his own Hector has to be drunk or stoned to reveal much of anything. He would rather listen. Packed with tricksters as he was he is an expert listener by now. But he tells her this and she knows from the pain in the admission, the catch of it in his throat, that she is the first person to hear it.
"I hated him, Lola. I hated him, and I still would've followed him after that, and I..." She knew him well enough to know he doesn't want her arm around him. If she puts her arm around him he's going to fall apart. He draws a deeper breath to reel in his composure and goes on, "You're right." Then he pushes errant strands of hair back from his forehead and that's how that conversation ends. "I don't want to keep you out here all night. Are you headed home?"
Lola Hawkes
If she were to hook that arm around his shoulders, he would lose his composure. He might (finally) sob, bury his face into her neck and shoulder and hair and try to muffle his sorrow in his Kinfolk. Because this is one reason why Kinfolk are here on this Earth. Most will argue that the main purpose of a Kinfolk is to perpetuate their dying species, and to be the guides through the intricacies of the Human World. They were ambassadors. They were the money makers.
But it's often overlooked that they're here for support. They were built to withstand Rage so that they could weather the storm of stress, frustration, and sorrow that their Warrior cousins would need to vent.
Unfortunately for Hector, Lola wasn't well suited to the traditional role of a Kinfolk. She wasn't a soft place to lay your head at night. She didn't have the right words to soothe the soul, she wasn't very good at reading boundaries or desires within her fellows. She had built herself for war, so here in the aftermath she wasn't sure what to do when the Galliard had such a clear need for a real, proper Kinfolk. He confessed that he hated Corey so badly, but he would have kept following his Alpha regardless. Lola's lips pressed together and her brows furrowed. She wanted to say something to make it better, but didn't know what to.
So, instead, she clapped a hand solidly onto his shoulder, patted it a few times, then moved her hand to the side of his face, just for a second, resting on his cheek before it fell away.
"All of that's alright. You aren't wrong to've wanted to follow your Alpha. But now? That's you. And you don't need him, even if ya miss him."
By the way she cleared her throat and glanced back to the truck they'd come to stand beside, he could tell that was all she thought to say on the matter. Hands dipped into her pockets, and she withdrew her truck keys. "Yeah, I'm headed back home. Was gonna see Ed tomorrow for lunch, and if I keep blowin' him off he'll start accusing me of liking this fuckin' filth hole." She meant the city, of course. The last line was delivered with a grin, trying to take the broken ice and push it out to sea.
Hector Ghosh
He'd likened spending the night in the same bed with her to being like spending the night in the same bed as one of his packsisters. Not the same thing at all but moments like this when she stands uncomfortable and unknowing in the face of such strong grief as his are moments Hector can point back at later and say See? You're practically one of us.
That pat to the shoulder does nothing to him and by the time his eyes fall shut at the touch of a hand to his face it's gone. Looks as if he'd flinched or just blinked. And then there's nothing more to say about it.
Hector nods his acceptance of her trajectory and her purpose in being there tomorrow and a slice of a laugh cuts across his teeth. They're back to joking. They're going to be alright.
"Yeah," he says, and affects a powerful and light-eyed frown of confusion, "why do you keep coming up here, anyway? This place sucks."
He'd called her a schoolgirl earlier. That's why she keeps coming up here. Some scruffy long-haired kid who happens to be her tribesman keeps plying her with promises of Wyrmlings to kill and helpless humans to defend and up until a couple weeks ago he'd been courting her. Now they part ways not with him holding her gaze for so long as he can or touching her in a way that lets him read her response but holding up a palm so she can slap him five.
That isn't what he wants to do but this, like the death of half of his pack and the abandonment of his alpha, is something he just has to get over on his own.
"Alright. Don't drive like an asshole. I'll see you around."
Lola Hawkes
"For fools like you," was her answer to why she keeps coming into town.
The palm held up for a high five was looked at skeptically, but she wasn't one to leave a brother hanging. So she smacked her palm to his, then grinned and tossed the keys up in the air, then snatched them out of it again with the same hand. This was part for self-entertainment, and to take the long way to correcting her grip so that she was holding the key itself and not just the whole of the key chain in her fist.
"I'll see you around," she confirmed. "Goodnight."
And so the Kinfolk would climb into her truck and start the engine. She would pull away from the curb, but only to swing the big white truck around in a U-turn and head the opposite direction up the street, away from the scene that they'd just left. She'd wave to him as she passed by, and then the truck would round a corner and be gone.
Words were likely left unsaid, things likely left unresolved. Hector needed a place to lay his grief, and Lola didn't know how to give that to him anymore than she could give him the romance he'd sought before. But, with her hands gripping the steering wheel and her hair tossing about in the breeze generated by driving with the window down, she made a resolution to herself.
She'd need to have words with Corey.
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